>>536528523
This guy, he's the communications director at Playstack, Balatro's publisher. I'm guessing they got in touch when setting up the Balatro collab and from there him or someone he introduced Eric to might have coaxed him with some kind of "hey it would be cool if you did other collabs, there's this one game also interested in a partnership that has a lot of overlap with the Stardew fandom, I think fans would really appreciate if we made something happen"

From this tweet >>536109240 you can infer that the "I genuinely thought players would like it" refers to Infinity Nikki because "I was a fan of the other games" refers to Terraria and Balatro, his other other 2 collabs.

>>718698967
This guy works for Balatro's publisher I guess when they set up the Balatro collab which is a game he's a huge fan of they might have kind pushed him into doing other things and he just went along with
It. idk not gonna pretend the whole thing isn't a bit perplexing

I'm just gonna blame the "Communications Director" at Playstack, Balatro's publisher. He's the mastermind that manipulated Eric

>Communications Director @ Playstack
Collabing is a slipper slope